See, we like to do stuff. We like to build things, invent things, make stuff happen. It’s probably the urge at the root of the whole NuChurch project. This is the new world! Whee! All that old stuff was no good for this shiny new thing. We need new stuff! We need to be entertained! We need to be kept busy! Shake that tamborine! Wave those banners! Get those ladies up around the altar! Let’s party!

Don’t we all feel it though? That we have created something we all know cannot be sustained. And quite frankly, no matter how shiny and new and be-chromed, it’s something we all know isn’t really worth sustaining.

Just take a look at them and think about the men who made them, the men who sold them, the men who looked longingly at them when they were owned by someone else. Every one of them came proudly rolling off an auto assembly line, every one was coveted by someone. Every one of them was a thing that men would be willing to do without necessities for, to steal for…

Every one of them was a symbol of something unattainable, something beautiful and perfect and pristine. And you could buy it! If you just strived hard enough, got rich enough, made all the right moves. It didn’t matter what sort of man you were. It didn’t matter if you were a bad-tempered husband or a negligent wife or a disobedient child. No moral failing would keep you from getting the Shiny Thing. This was perfection and beauty and goodness that could be had easily.

Meanwhile, The Real just keeps on doing what it always does.

Lent.

It’s Lent. And I’m thinking about the way lives were lived before the Shiny Thing became the thing we all strove for. What was life for before we all wanted a new Shiny Thing a month? What did we do to keep ourselves going?

In the old dispensation, the one that was in accord with The Real, slow and steady wins the race.

This is the Benedictine way. This is the Catholic way. The way of the Natural Law.

Time is on its side. It wins. It always, always wins.

This is why I’m really not that worried about things. I’m glad, rather, that these stupid ways are coming to an end, one way or another, and that Real Things are going to become unavoidable again.

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(More cool pics.)

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